Patterns retrieval system: A first attempt

Abstract

New approaches to the development of information systems, based on components reuse, are now preferred to traditional ones. In particular, patterns are among the most frequently “re-used” components in such approaches. Tools must be provided to applications developers to help them to use these patterns during the analysis, design and implementation of applications. In particular, help must be given for the users to retrieve patterns corresponding to their problems. We present in this paper an experiment whose aims are to identify the ability and the quality of the classical techniques provided by the information retrieval field in a pattern retrieval system. In this first attempt, we apply these techniques to a specific library of patterns: Gamma’s design patterns corpus, and we evaluate the results of this experiment in order to identify the specific need of the user and the direction in which our patterns retrieval system should evolve.